considering pictures | sean justice > open journal

© 2011 Doyeon Kim A question we keep coming back to: how do we balance skill-learning and skill-teaching within the multifaceted conversation about ideas, history, and practice that makes up art education? If you're studying photography, design, new media, or art in any of a dozen guises, this question is at the core of what you're doing — whether you explicitly ask it or not (because the folks who run your course have asked and answered it for you). And if you're teaching photography, design, etc., it's even more critical — because your answer affects, de facto , the lives of everyone who studies with you. There are several ways to divide this up, and many different rationales for arguing this side or that side, but the equation basically comes down to two options: either skill is more important than history and theory, or vice versa. And perhaps a third option — oops, almost forgot — skill, history, and theory might be equally important. Abandoned © 2011 Yar...

...so many amazing conversations this week...my head is spinning... These pictures and essays and websites and code poems...all of it. Your work inspires me. I am reading Maxine Greene and thinking about being an artist educator within the framework she illuminates. We may have reached a moment in our history when teaching and learning, if they are to happen meaningfully, must happen on the verge. Confronting a void, confronting nothingness, we may be able to empower the young to create and re-create a common world—and, in cherishing it, in renewing, discover what it signifies to be free. ( Dialectic of Freedom , p. 23) The common space emerges from our conversation and I am transported to the edge of something I don't know how to describe. I'm on the verge. I am the young and your work is the teacher; in class and at the coffee shop I learn again and again that mark making matters (whether with a camera, a crayon, a line of text or a string of code on a computer), an...

Chrisler Building From Pongal Restaurant, by Luis Paris This photo was snapped by my colleague and former student, Luis Paris. Last week after class at ICP we went over to Jerry Vezzuso's opening at the Camera Club of New York , and then got a quick bite at Pongal . Along the way, walking from ICP to the CCNY, and then briskly from there all the way to Lex and 26th (a long chilly stroll!), we talked about photography and how one knows if the pictures are making sense, if they're working, if anyone likes them, and if it even matters -- or, more precisely, how it matters. At dinner Luis summed it up with a few thoughts about what he's looking for from the conversation whenever he's showing his work. From a critique I'm looking for two things: first, whether or not my pictures appear visually similar to other pictures that I might not know about, and, second, if there's an interpretation of my work that I don't want to have anything to do with. Thi...

Last week at ICP we ran with Collage/Montage again. This is one of my favorite ways to teach. Basically it's like finger painting. We throw ideas on the table from many different directions -- that is, pictures from the history of collage and montage, pictures from today, Photoshop techniques, darkroom techniques -- and then cajole folks into letting their intuition loose. Headless Barbie on the scanner. By the end of the week we were zooming back and forth between the computer lab, the black & white darkroom, and the color darkroom. People were scanning and printing and rescanning. Stuff was getting cut up, recombined, and then re-cut up. An inkjet negative getting ready for the darkroom. The organizing question at the root of this workshop is about the role of the edge of the picture within the picture itself. When you shoot a photography, what do you include inside the frame? What do you exclude? Normally that boundary is invisible (we don't think about the stu...

As you know, I'm an advocate of using the camera to connect to life. By the looks of it, though (no posting here for far too long, and very little new pix on flickr), it would seem that I've not been following my own advice. And that, perhaps, I've become disconnected. Both are probably correct at this point. But, actually, I make pictures almost every day: at odd moments in-between breaths, on the ferry, before starting to shave in the morning. Really, though, all I'm doing is clicking the shutter. That is, I'm not sure it's truly picture-making because that's as far as the process goes. There's no time for sorting and editing; two thousand latent frames sit unseen in my Lightroom catalog. Do you remember that word? Latent. Once we mystified that state of existence. Between the click of the shutter and the emergence from the D76, we had time to romanticize the unknown, the half-known, and the almost but not quite ready to be known. Today we ...

We want pictures. We are saturated with this desire. The ad moguls want us to direct that passion towards their clients' commodities. Once in a while, though, we find evidence of another kind of wanting. Delivering some more of the endless paperwork that the educatioal beurocracy demands, I cross paths with a kindred soul, and stumble on a sign of the power of pictures. This way has recently been marked. I am not alone. Out here, in here, through here, picture-makers travel together. This is the gut of what I hope we're doing together this term: photography is a way to pay attention to our lives, our desires. We also want eggs, deviled eggs. At least, I do. Especially at a picnic on a warm day with friends and blankets and folding camp chairs, comfortable in the sun. With sangria, too. And cold white wine. But, summer is over. It's rainy in New York. Time to get to work! See you in class.

Toronto 2010, from our recent vacation. I've been thinking a lot about perception lately, as I always do at the start of the new term. The puzzle comes back when I begin to map a course: how is it possible to picture a round world in a flat rectangle? The projection of one onto one feels miraculous and ordinary. That paradox is thrilling, intoxicating! I want to share it with you. But for you to see it, to do it, first I've got to make the process visible. And yet I'm filled with doubt. How can I do that? That is, what will you (in class) perceive as I waltz through my material, the rant of my lecture, the pictures on screen, the assignments, and my reactions to your assignments? And, how will I perceive that you're seeing anything? Even seeing that you're paying attention is difficult. (Although it's easy to see when you're falling asleep in class...sometimes.) At the start of each new term it comes back to me that, really, the project of learning...

If you remember this, you're with me. Ah, the smell of fixer in the morning. Unexpectedly I find myself managing a darkroom at Columbia University Teachers College. As you might know, I began a doctorate in college art education last year, focusing on digital art education. This year, in addition to everything else, I'll be mixing chemistry and reminding people to agitate. There's a lot I've forgotten, am surprised to remember... odors, textures, procedures. This week I'm scrubbing trays and rebuilding shelves. Next week I'll realign enlargers. The lab is on the roof. From the front door I watch the sky and the texture of the slate as it changes with the light. In a different life — more than twenty years ago — I taught photography in Tucson, Arizona, at Salpointe High School and Pima Community College. Stranded negatives were common. Here's a thing I've forgotten — the ephemeral materiality of the Tri-X negative strip; curled, translucent,...

We're done for summer. Time for a break. I'm headed to Toronto tomorrow with the family. Got to clear the storm in front of the maelstrom coming. So here's the thing -- can a photograph touch? Can you make a photograph that touches? What do you feel when you see wet paint? I've got to scrape my fingers across the surface to check it out. I know it's cliché. But...this simple sign makes me touch. Can a photograph feel that way? This is what we talked about this summer in the China workshop and in the two introductory photo workshops back here at ICP. And, seriously, this is what I'm talking about in class this fall...so, if you're working with me, get ready for that conversation. I don't know if it's possible, really, but I want pictures that make me fly. Ah. Naive. Yes.

I'm slowly mining through the several thousand photographs I collected during the Beijing project last month. This one surfaces unexpectedly. I remember the thick still air, and the steep, sweaty climb behind the Forbidden City. I remember the dusk and the dragonflies. I remember feeling annoyed that my dSLR battery had died earlier that afternoon because I'd forgotten to charge it the previous night. I also remember the moment I looked up and saw the concentric circles of this structure from beneath the trees. I don't remember why I forgot about this picture until I found it again just now. The camera doesn't make the picture; the brain does. And the world and the imagination meet in a slow dance of negotiation, each making due with the limitations and neuroses that the other brings. This might be my favorite picture from the month. To the Photo Two group from ICP last week -- thanks for the great work. Keep looking up and keep making pictures.

On the weekend at the Summer Palace, morning, wandering. On Longevity Hill the quiet was deep and still, cicadas in the trees, dense and present. Near the lake the crowds pushed in, and tour guides with megaphones blaring. Amidst it all, water writing. He turned and saw me photographing him, and handed me the brush. I'd always wanted to play that language. In the crowds I heard the cicadas again and felt a private silence working through my shoulders and torso as I swept backwards trailing water, momentarily fluent in my private writing. Day ten approaches; our workshop is ending tomorrow. I've learned so much more about Beijing, China, teaching, and cultural exploration. I'm so grateful for the excellent company of the group who joined me. See more pix on flickr ...added daily (almost), and please check in with the project blog .

Zha Zhiang Mien on a warm afternoon. Summer Palace majesty in the morning, still hot on my feet, and the silence of the mountain still humming in my heart. A short ride past the noisy gates and we arrive. This must be what heaven feels like. I'm posting pictures as fast as possible on flickr (click on these pictures to connect to the collection). More to come. Sorry about the minimal captions. Lunch is long and dinner is longer. This isn't the time for sitting at the computer. Please follow our workshop blog !

4:30 am. Time to get up and start shaking off the jet-lag. Breakfast downstairs starts at 6:00. I'm using the quiet fuzzy hours to enable the proxy server so I can keep posting. In a bit, or so, I'll get together with Songzi, my friend, a script writer who works with foreign movie productions here in Beijing, to go over the plans for the coming weeks. She's helping me arrange transportation and other logistics for the workshop. Then, off to Three Shadows to compare notes with Isabelle and say hi to Rong Rong and inri. Can't wait to get my feet on the ground. The workshop blog is Beijing2010 , as I noted in a earlier post . Please check it out and follow along. Outside my smudged hotel window, the early morning sky looks promising. Bright sunrise reflects off the buildings in the distance and wispy clouds show the blue above. Time now to get some breakfast and that first cup of Chinese coffee.

China Air to Beijing today. Follow the workshop at Beijing2010 . The goal is to unfold something authentic about the experience — to get below the surface of the cliché that we think we know. It can be simple, like learning how to drink free leaf green tea, or more complex, like learning how to navigate a world without an alphabet. I want to learn how to picture a process that is subtle and multi-varied. Can a camera show us something we don't know how to see?

Beijing Airport, China plate display The Beijing photography workshop with the International Center of Photography and the Three Shadows Photography Center is about to start. I'll be in Beijing next week to get the final details put together. There's still time to join us ! We're going to explore the process of learning about culture with our pictures. Learn more about the workshop at the ICP website , or ask me directly. It's going to be a blast, an adventure, and a fantastic learning experience. Come dance with us!

I'm up again. Third try. Hiroshi's ginko seeds are in the dirt this week. A favorite project from this past year is Hiroshi Sunairi's Tree Project . I've documented two previous attempts at growing a seed from the hibaku trees in Hiroshima -- the trees that survived the atomic bomb. Unfortunately, both of those attempts ended badly (view those posts by clicking on the keyword "tree project"). But with Hiroshi's encouragement, I'm going for another attempt. This time I've planted ginko seeds. There are many reasons why this project appeals to me so much. I like the idea of new life generating from the ashes of the bomb site. I also like the idea of nurturing and relationality that is inherent to participation. As well, especially with these seeds, I like the memories that resurface and reconnect me to my South Korean childhood—in the backyard grew a centuries' old ginko that, according to legend, the young emperor played beneath. (The le...

My point has been that photography is a way of pointing. The language around photography and making photographs is varied and has multiple, folded, agendas. Compare, for example, the New York Times with BP press releases about the oil spill, or with any annual report from your favorite tech company. Who points at what? What is their goal? Who do they think is looking at what they're pointing at? The use of a lens system to make pictures means pointing at objects, one way or another. The choice of which objects to point at is determined by context, by what you care about, by what you want me to care about. Sontag says that photographing is a way of collecting the world. Wrong, nearly. Photography (in so far as we think of photography as making pictures with lens-based technology) is a way of pointing to what you've collected of the world. Your collection is different from mine, but I'm confident that you have a collection. Let's think about how a lens coaxes us...

School's out for summer, and all that. But keep going with your photography. Keep making pictures and paying attention to the way the world looks and feels. I've thoroughly enjoyed working with all of you this term and hope to keep crossing paths. Please keep in touch! And please keep tuning in to these pages for occasional updates and thoughts about the learning process. As always, I'm grateful for your thoughts on it.

After you've decided to make pictures you must decide how your body will frame the experience. That is, where is the edge? The boundary? The horizon between what is in, and what is out? These choices matter, and photography it's the shape of your body that determines how your audience will see what you see. In class we talk about what you want to look at, and about what you want me to know about it. These are the ultimate questions. But buried within them, preceding them, is a skill more primary: can you feel the frame? In The Photographer's Eye , John Szarkowski writes The central act of photography, the act of choosing and eliminating, forces a concentration on the picture edge—the line that separates in from out—and on the shapes that are created by it. In this essay ( read it here ) Szarkowski is trying define the major differences between photographic picture-making and other kinds of picture-making, as he sees them. In one way or another you've most lik...

What do you want to look at? What do you want me to know about it? These are the questions as we move toward photography projects. The goal of our work together is to make pictures that relate to our time together, that explore and expand from one another. Sometimes called a "series"...I prefer to think about "projects." The difference might not be evident on the surface, but the distinction is about the idea of work itself, and pictures that emerge from work. I've written on this topic before , but it bears repeating. The work you do is emotional, intellectual, spiritual, historical, even mathematical; it's the work of exploring and thinking; the work of breathing, of just making it through each day, each week. You're working it because you chose to do so. Even if you don't think of it as a choice. The pictures that emerge from the work have been the focus of our seminar. In other words, all the talk about computers and buttons, aperture...